Love Me Not
by lady vonne
Summary: Pansy Parkinson never makes his pale skin flush. She never starts a spark behind the cloud of his sharp, gray eyes. Instead she exists unremarkably- a pansy, a simple pansy- so she rips off the next petal greedily and, my God, how it wails. "He loves me."


**Love Me Not  
><strong>_"I was kidnapped real young by the sweet taste of love."_

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><p>A sad, single pansy sits in a sea of lovely roses.<p>

It's nothing extraordinary, nothing too special; and it stands there hunched over- prisoner to the wind and the wild way that it floats about it. Pansy Parkinson wonders if crushing it would be too-personal a genocide. She wonders if the heels of her shiny black shoes would make the petals splinter and then stain the seedy earth with the yellow-inked innards. She wonders if it might hurt or if the stem might shutter. So she charms the little blossom just to hear it suffer.

It screams out loud when she picks it. In a sick, strange way it sounds like her; and she shivers, watching the tiny leaves wriggle on the stem, arm-like and desperate. However, the pansy pushes against the confines of her fingers as if it knows she's about to break it, and so Pansy endures. She keeps her head tilted slightly to the side and balances her back against the trunk of the broadest tree as, "He loves me," she tells the center only seconds before plucking off the first petal.

"He loves me not."

It's odd because if Draco Malfoy does love her, he's got quite a funny way of making her feel like it. The same way that she never catches him glance sideways at her from out the corner of his eyes is the desolate uncertainty she contains in the middle of her weak, empty chest. And granted, she busies her unease with small, admiring tendencies of her own girlish whim. She compliments him constantly and giggles dutifully at his jokes. She pieces together his uniform in the morning and shakes him awake from the covers so that he doesn't wind up late. And when he graces her lap with the presence of his head, Pansy has to do all she can just to keep herself together for _his _head is in _her _lap, and she strokes his blond hair just to preoccupy herself with monotony.

Nonetheless, Pansy Parkinson never makes his pale skin flush. She never starts a spark behind the cloud of his sharp, gray eyes. Instead she exists unremarkably- a _pansy, _a simple pansy- so she rips the next petal off greedily and, _my God_, how it wails.

"He loves me," Pansy yells at the flower over all the ghastly noise its making. _He does, _she wants to tell it. There's three petals left and Pansy's stomach does flips for nerves that only make her head hurt. She wants to avoid the unavoidable, wants to will a fourth petal into existence, but instead she stares at the last remaining pieces like a statue, repeating. He loves me.

He loves me not.

He loves me.

He loves me not.

He loves me. He loves me. He does. He does. He does. He _does. _

It's funny how Mother Nature doesn't understand any of her plight. Funny, in the strangest sort of sense, how Pansy Parkinson can be a flower and a weed, ugly and misunderstood all at the very same time. She doesn't want to pluck the petal from the suffering plant because terror overcomes her like a cretin in her lungs. It wriggles through her stomach like worms through her intestines; and when it finally finds peace, it makes home in her skeleton, intertwining with her core like a part of her. Forever.

And its the 'Not'- the final, concluding 'Not'- that rattles her upon the meadow like a madman, someone crazy. Because facing the possibility is absolutely nothing like she'd imagined it to be, she sits. Because failing to resist the urge to rip her hair out in chunks is almost imminent, she sits on the grass and the pansy keeps sobbing. Then the 'He Loves Me Not' petal flutters and Pansy feels stupid, all perched under the willow tree in her best emerald dress. Her mascara is running down her cheeks and her hair is sticking to her forehead; and her legs are aching and her eyes won't stop stinging. "He loves me not," she whispers slowly and lets the flower piece hit the ground in elegance.

"He loves me."

When the last petal remains, Pansy Parkinson does all she can not to bend over and sick up all over its discarded limbs scattered messily at her feet. She wants to crush the broken blossom beneath her shoes. She wants to smother it to smithereens. She wants to take the twiggy stem and pull it apart, piece by perky piece. Nevertheless, she weighs her options like a woman discarded, for she can either ignore the last part of the flower or face it dead on. And in her head she tells her subconscious, "He loves me."

Though under her nose, the remaining bit reminds her that Draco Malfoy, he loves her not.

Picking up all the composure she can muster, Pansy lifts herself up from the ground and brushes the petals from her dress. She smoothes her hair back behind her ears and listens to everything but the ungodly cries of the dying flower in her grasp. Yet-

With an amplitude of grace and a side of semi-innocence, she drops the flower from her fingers and watches it hit the dewy earth below her. For good measure- and perhaps _only _for the sake of good measure- she turns away and stomps the thing into silence until finally (_finally_) the pansy is put out of its misery.

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><p><strong>Vonne: <strong>Please review!


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